Humanity
by The Abbot of Beregost
Summary: Rommie despairs after Widening Gyre, finds hope again.UPDATED!
1. Default Chapter

**A/N:** Just after Widening Gyre. I always liked the first two season best, and was disappointed when the writers seemed to up and leave just about every relationship. That, and the insta-cure that saves everyone at the last moment. So, yeah. My take on WG, with more sweet sweet realism...I think.

Dylan was on the table, unconscious. Trance was patching up, nanites moving as fast as they could to repair the structural damage the Magog had done to him. Structural damage, what am I saying...he's human. He can feel pain. He has one body, one mind, one shot at life. I guess I can understand that, and that's why I try to protect him. I feel like Jill, sometimes. We're too much alike.

His hair. I touch his hair, and what do I feel? I interpret tactile sensation on twenty-nine different scales and gauge them against past experience. I can't feel soft, hard, anything. I can't feel it like he can. That's why I hate this body, sometimes. It's like having your own ghost running around. Yes, you can interact with the world, but just barely. I'm not human. I can see the people I care about, I can talk to them, I can help them a little bit... but never enough. I can't feel what they can. I don't eat, I don't sleep, I don't play, I don't do anything they do. I'm trapped in a world of shadows, shadows of things I wish I was. I wish I was human. Then maybe Dylan would care for me as more than a treasured possession.

He's lying there, broken, and there's nothing I can do. As a warship, I'm used to having a certain amount of power over a situation. I'm used to simply obliterating anything that's a threat, or an obstacle. When I'm in this body, there's so little I can do. As a ship, I can protect him with my body, shield him, lay down my life knowing he'll be safe. It's hard knowing that the instant he leaves me, he's vulnerable. This body goes with him, but it's cold comfort. I know that a stray bullet, a fall, a disease could get him and there'd be nothing I could do. Just like that, he's gone forever. No new body, no resurrection in Harper's lab. Gone. It's hard, knowing you can obliterate planets but you're basically helpless to save the person who means the most to you.

He's waking up. Look at me, Dylan. Look at me. See how I feel.

I'm yours, heart, body, and soul. You just need to reach out.

Look at me, Dylan. Please.

Please.

Look at me, Dylan, I am nothing. I am nothing without you.

He doesn't. He doesn't look me in eye. So I leave, it's getting awkward. Trance is staring. So, I hide. Ship-self can hold the fort a little while. I go to the only place I really consider my own- it's a little bay, off Harper's den. Sometimes, it seems like an abattoir to me, but I have a little corner behind a large particle collider. I put a cot in there, a pillow, a blanket. It's dark, and I can go there and be alone. I pretend to go to sleep sometimes. I pretend, I wait for a sleep that will never come, reach out for a man that will never lie beside me. I remembered the days and weeks and months and years I spent watching him as he slept, hologram reaching out to touch him. Holograms can't feel, and neither can I.

This was much worse. I could touch him, but he didn't want to be touched. I couldn't FEEL him. So I curled up in my corner, pulled the blanket over myself.

Look at me, Dylan. Look at me, I'm nothing.

I could have died, right there. Death, of course, has a lot less meaning to me. It's an abstract concept- destroy the android, it can be rebuilt. Repaired. Part of me wanted to curl up in a ball and disappear into nothing. Part of me urged me to continue being his faithful servant, and just keep doing. He'd notice me one day.

I closed my eyes, cut myself off from the ship. I lay there, and I thought.

_Could Dylan ever love a machine?_

_Could anyone? _

_Is what I'm feeling love? How would I know?_

_Why do I care for him so much?_

_What am I doing?_

I barely heard him come in. I didn't even notice he was there until I felt (to the degree that I can experience that sensation) his hand on me. It wasn't even his full hand, just a gentle stroke of the back of his fingers across my cheek. Something was off, I could tell right away. A thumb wiped away tears I hadn't even realized I'd cried. I opened my eyes, expecting Dylan.

It was Harper, just sitting there, looking hurt. My memories of him were recalled, reviewed. He gave me my body. He had been repairing and maintaining me for almost a year, in both forms. Harper defended me after the assassination. He comforted her after Gabriel's betrayal. Looking back on that, I realized just how he had been there for me. He had given me everything he had. And now, he sat here, trying to make me feel better without even asking what was wrong. He didn't need to, I don't think. I could have been crying over not being a flying mongoose, and he would have been doing the same.

It struck me like a bolt of lightning. Harper loved me. I don't know why, but I felt compelled to reach out, pull him close. He sat down beside me, and I put my head in his lap and wept. He just stroked my hair, the entire time. Not a single question, not a word. He held me, stared at me until I stopped crying. We're alike, in that way- we follow our hearts as best we can, no matter how badly they've been broken.

I remembered how I had treated Harper, how he always wanted to be close to me. I wept for him, for myself, for Dylan. I wept as he watched me, and I knew that I was everything to him.

And I'd treated him so badly.

Our fingers intertwined, and I pulled him down beside me. My arms were around his chest as he lay there beside me. I held him until I felt safe again, until he and I both went to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Exit Strategies. Everyone loves angst and sacrifice, so I wrote this up. I mean, if the producers wanted, this could have been a wonderful, poignant moment. I find it quite telling that of the fan-rated top-ten moments (http/ eight are from seasons 1 and 2. So, this is how I envisioned it, once again from Rommie's perspective. I couldn't quite do my vision justice, though.

"Reactor overload. Power Reactor One going critical. Unable to vent due to damage in the AP line."

Ship-self was calm as always, but I was panicking. Hell, I was a psychotic wreck. Stopping Harper from killing himself almost sent me over the edge. I felt useless. I was still in pieces, barely able to move. So many holes in me it would takes months to fix. My chief engineer - my protector, the only person who could ever fill that role - was suicidal and probably in a drunken stupor. What good is a warship that can't fight, whose crew is cracking under the strain?

He sat there, sidearm in hand. I didn't care what happened to me anymore. He HAD to live. If I could, I would tear those damn larvae out of him... but I couldn't. He'd die, if he wasn't dying now. I saw the daily reports of how they drained his system, sucked the life out of him...but I had to do something. I got angry.

"Harper, if you don't get in there and fix that line, we'll blow up! Do you hear me? You're going to die!"

Yeah, not _we're all gonna die_, or _we're both going to die_, but_ you're going to die_. I didn't matter. I saw him vanishing in the light of my cataclysmic overload, and I couldn't stand it. I was a warship, death was an inevitability for me. An ugly, miserable death. But him? He'd seen more of hell than I could imagine. He deserved more from life. He deserved more than me- just a plastipolymer machine.

"Good. 'Cause in case you didn't notice when I had that gun shoved into my gut, I WANT to die. I don't wanna live another day with these freakin' monsters inside of me."

I didn't care that he turned his bitterness against me. The pain was excruciating, but I could take it. I could take it if he lived. Time was ticking down.

"Harper, look. I know how you feel."

Keep talking, get him to listen. Empathize with him- he managed to do the same for us.

"Hah! What have you been drinking? You don't know how I feel."

Oh, Harper. Please. But I have more important things to worry about than the simulacra of feelings he programmed into me. I have to get him to save himself. _Dig deep, Rommie, and get the job done. _Something tore inside of me, and all my fear came bubbling out. There was jsut enough restraint to keep me from telling him how I felt.

"What about inside of me? The only reason we encountered the Magog world-

ship in the first place is because some backup copy inside of me – a me I didn't even

know existed – came out! Came out and started shooting, tried to kill us – ALL of us.

What else is there inside of me? What other demons do I have to worry about?"

Silence.

"Reactor critical in seventy seconds."

Just over a minute to get him going.

"That's why you can't die, Harper. Because I need you. And if you're gone, who's going to fix me?"

He thought about it. No, he didn't. I like to imagine that he actually has feelings for me, and those feelings drove him to save us both. I don't know, though. I guess I never will. He banged his head against the wall, gritted his teeth, and got moving. I started sobbing as soon as I thought he couldn't hear me. Like I said, something tore, and it hurt. It hurt a lot.

When I look back, I don't know if I could have put him out of his misery if he wanted me to. I guess I have a shade of humanity after all.


End file.
